DHSDSM beta: Game Over.

[Adel]

Mod: Is there a penalty for continual posting in one’s regular account?

no such penalty appears in the rule-set. Depending upon what I learn from the post-game my next hydra game may have a penalty in my next game. Votes and unvotes have to be posted from your hydra, but y'all already knew that.

[Adel]

fixed, sorry for the mistake.

Votecount as of post 238:

Raging Wishbone:

4

:Yosariwen, nyballosulgniirkps, Zaphod Beeblebrox, J-Scope
Zaphod Beeblebrox:

2

:Trotsky, Ojando
PoketheAlpaca:

1

:Ortohoops,
Frog Dodging

1

:

J-Scope,

Trotsky:

1

:Zmd,
Ortohoops:

1

:PoketheAlpaca
zmd:

1

:Frog Dodging,
J-Scope:

1

:Raging Wishbone

not voting:

0

:

while 11 players are alive, 6 votes will lynch

For future reference, prodding me is pointless.

For future reference, all players are expected to post every 72 hours. Due to my negligence, the current prod mechanism is proving insufficient to maintain that standard of activity. Continued abuse of the prod mechanism to avoid posting only encourages me to revise the activity/prod rules to something more draconian. Y'all are a bunch of active players, grouped into hydra. Post more, please. I am asking nicely, with a thinly veiled threat.

[Adel]

ok, just a quick check here to see who is committed to this game.

Personally, I believe that it suffers from structural problems (the action phase mechanic) and it is eventually going to fail. This is the longest 13 pages of a game on MS (I'm pretty sure) and I think it would be nearly impossible to replace into.

I've been thinking really hard about how to resolve this, and I've considered:
1. changing the action phase mechanic to something similar to alpha's, but a bit more mild
2. setting a calendar deadline, with largest minority lynching at deadline
3. abandoning the game
4 eliminating the prod mechanic entirely (or amend it)

If y'all want to talk about it, PM me (or the SA mod account) or post in the original signup thread: http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11268

I respect the hell out of all of you players, and I don't want this game to be a cause of mafiascum burnout... and this game just doesn't seem

fun

.

right now I'm partial to option 3, but I haven't put nearly as much work into it as the rest of you.

Let me know!

[Adel]

Votecount as of post 414:

Zmd:

2

:Ortohoops, Frog Dodging,

Zmd

J-Scope:

1

:

J-Scope

Zmd

not voting:

8

:J-Scope, nyballosulgniirkps, Ojando, PoketheAlpaca, Zaphod Beeblebrox,

while 8 players are alive, 5 votes will lynch

[Adel]

Votecount as of post 426:

Zmd:

2

:Ortohoops, Frog Dodging,
J-Scope:

1

:Zmd,
Zaphod Beeblebrox:

1

:J-Scope,

not voting:

4

:nyballosulgniirkps, Ojando, PoketheAlpaca, Zaphod Beeblebrox,

while 8 players are alive, 5 votes will lynch

Countdown Timer to Deadline

[Adel]

ITT I fail at votecounts.

Votecount as of post 426:

Zmd:

3

:Ortohoops, Frog Dodging, nyballosulgniirkps
J-Scope:

1

:Zmd,
Zaphod Beeblebrox:

1

:J-Scope,

not voting:

3

:Ojando, PoketheAlpaca, Zaphod Beeblebrox,

while 8 players are alive, 5 votes will lynch

Countdown Timer to Deadline

[Adel]

Votecount as of post 451:

Zmd:

4

:Ortohoops, Frog Dodging, nyballosulgniirkps, PoketheAlpaca
J-Scope:

1

:Zmd,
Zaphod Beeblebrox:

1

:J-Scope,

not voting:

3

:Ojando, Zaphod Beeblebrox,

while 8 players are alive, 5 votes will lynch

Countdown Timer to Deadline

[Adel]

Votecount as of post 500:

Zaphod Beeblebrox:

1

:J-Scope,

not voting:

6

:Frog Dodging, nyballosulgniirkps, Ojando, Ortohoops, PoketheAlpaca, Zaphod Beeblebrox,

while 7 players are alive, 5 votes will lynch

Countdown Timer to Deadline

[Adel]

meeting Yhtill in the mountains tomorrow.

V/LA for 86 hours from this post.

try posting, it will help the time seem to go by faster in my absence. [/joke]

[Adel]

I'm quiting the site, but I'll see this game through.

[Adel]

Thanks for picking up the game Claus.

I messed in in Alpha... Spring pulled off an awesome claim in alpha, claiming tracker,

but was really vanilla in Alpha

, and was only a tracker in Beta. Her breadcrumb'ed claim was good enough that I made a mod error, my bad.

[Adel]

yep. a huge error.

[Adel]

I really felt sorry for incamn. They died so quickly in both games. Not my fault in either but I still felt sorry for them.

I am asuming you meant incamn and not spring since nyball was not a tracker. If you meant something more then feel free to explain your error further adel

no you got it right, and I failed again.

[Adel]

I'd like to apologize to adel for not being around earlier.

no apologies necessary. You were able to pick up when I needed to flake, and the players weren't effected. Thanks for being able to pick up so that I could flake. It really made my life easier over a couple of especially cruel days.

[Adel]

thanks for playing guys. I thought that both games showed some really exceptional play. I ended up getting really attached to the shaft.ed+elvis_knits team hydra - I was pissed when they died.

Beta was a fiasco due to design. Alpha was effected by mod error. I think I failed both games, alpha as a moderator, and beta as a designer.

alpha:
1 Armenian mafia godfather *13. J-Scope (Jahudo+KaleiÃ

[Adel]

What did you guys think of using hydra?

The phase sequencing in beta clearly failed, but was alpha ok? How could alpha have been more optimal in timing?

How did you like the setup design? I knew that alpha would end first, so I decided to go bastard in beta. The key that opened up the role design of beta for me was figuring out that if the setup is equally unfair for all players, then the setup is also balanced. In beta there were 2 sks, a scumgroup of 2, a scum group of 3, and a town of 7. That is five factions. Each faction was assigned a base of 20% chance of winning, and that % chance of winning was increased proportionally by how many players it had than one, and the & chance assigned to the thwo groups of sk's was turned down an equal amount. I figured that each sk should have ~ a 12% chance of winning, the Latvian mafia should have a 22% chance, the Bulgarian mafia should have a 22% chance, and the town should have a 28% chance. Those numbers are estimates from what I can recall. I thought that a tracker could really bust up the Latvian mafia, and that the SKs would stand a good chance of lurking through the early game. I really didn't expect the number of doctor roles to result in a lurkerfest. I would like to see another smallish 5 faction game using a time mechanic more similar to alpha.

[Adel]

Was there some general game philosophical backround thought that led you to write that free speech rule, Adel? It does make a fake-claimer's life rather hard.

arguments in MD about two years ago where the consensus was that letting players quote the mod breaks games. I disagreed with that consensus, and started I using the free speech clause for my games. Now it is a design feature. In Beta is was expected to make the mafia Doc's life more difficult. and fakeclaiming difficult in general, however if a person really put time and effort into preparing a fake claim, the screenshots and time/date stamps would help convince.

The philosophy that all of this reflects is that "the last resort to fixing a problem should be a new law or rule" -- the "problem" in this case being players quoting mod communication or role PMs, and the slippery slope of

almost

quoting mod communication or role PMs, like grammar lynchings and such. I think the more elegant solution is to just allow everything, and try to compensate for the likely consequences in the game design.

[Adel]

Do you think that anonymous hydra would be better, with a secret player list?

I still prefer allowing free posting, even though it may reward photoshop skills. Note that Kison got mislynched in part due to his having missed a submission, despite his considerable photoshop skills. There were other missed submissions that went unpunished. Allowing even screen shots rewards preparedness and penalizes sloppiness. Scum won in both games, and I think the setups were pretty balanced. Beta's design in particular made it hard for the Mafia Doctors to survive in a game that allows screen shots. I think I will go the other way in my next game though, and not allow screen shots. I'm considering a time mechanic like alpha's, but with 14 anonymous hydra in a semi-open game. Interested?